All posts tagged University of California

Today’s music fans have more positive memories of the songs of their parents’ generation than had been previously thought, according to a study published in the current edition of Psychological Science.

The authors, Carol Lynne Krumhansl of Cornell University’s Department of Psychology and her former student Justin Adam Zupnick of the University of California, Santa Cruz, say the study is the first to show that music transmitted from generation to generation shapes lasting autobiographical memories, preferences and emotional responses, a phenomenon they call “cascading reminiscence bumps.”

Reminiscence bumps refers to older adults’ proclivity to remember events that occurred during adolescence and early childhood. Previous studies have shown that older adults recognize the music of their late teens and early 20s with greater specificity and stronger emotions than music from other periods.

In the Cornell study, conducted in 2012, 62 participants – 40 women and 22 men with an average age of 20.1 years – heard in random order a series of 11 music clips, culled from hit songs of 1955 to 2009, after which they were asked to report the percentage of songs they recognized, how much they liked the songs in the clips, and to judge their quality. Participants also were asked to rate their emotional responses to the music. Read More »

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